Six on Saturday

After a week of rain, June 24 has dawned sunny, hot, and very very humid. The Propagator regularly blogs “Six on Saturday,” six things that are worth looking at in the garden on that particular day. I thought it might be fun to join in and discovered that it is a good way to notice things. Once I started trying to decide what to photograph, I discovered that there was a lot going on in the garden.

These seed-grown Gloriosa are in a large tub that I drag into the crawl space of the house and store dry over the winter. I also have several plants that overwinter in the ground, but they are a couple of weeks behind the tubbed plants and are still in bud. This is such a cool plant. Probably needs a blog post all of its own sometime soon.

2. Lilium lancifolium

Lilium lancifolium, tiger lily

This tiger lily is about six feet tall, but in just a few weeks it will be dwarfed by the clump of Silphium perfoliatum that is growing behind it.

3. Hemerocallis hybrid

Hemerocallis hybrid

This unlabeled daylily came from the sale rack of a local Home Depot. Not bad.

4. Tigridia pavonia

Tigridia pavonia, yellow form

I had heard that Tigridia pavonia doesn’t like hot, humid summers and wet winters, so when I bought a bag of mixed-color corms last year, I expected them to give me a few interesting flowers and then disappear. Instead, it seems that virtually all of them survived the winter and many are producing inflorescences for a second year. This is the first flower to open this year.

5. Prosthechea mariae

Prosthechea mariae

In the greenhouse, an epiphytic orchid from dry woodland in northern Mexico. The pendant flowers are best appreciated from below, and their color suggests that they are moth pollinated.

6. Paphiopedilum Lynleigh Koopowitz

Paphiopedilum Lynleigh Koopowitz (P. delenatii x P. malipoense)

Another greenhouse orchid. This is a primary hybrid of two ladyslipper orchid species from southern China and Vietnam.

I can’t remember if you have an outdoor garden in addition to the orchids. Yell if you want some bulbils. There are lots.

The Gloriosa also has some strange propagation-related anatomy. The stamens are more or less radially symmetric, but the style bends sharply to one side. Consequently, the flower can only be pollinated by a bee (or whatever) that approaches at a particular angle. There doesn’t seem to be anything in the flower’s anatomy that indicates which side is the “correct” side. It’s very odd.

Love the gloriosa. I wonder if that would tolerate our climate. Prob not reliably hot enough here, shame. I agree with you about thinking through what to show. I initially thought that it might get repetitive but not so. There are always six things worth mentioning if you look hard enough. Love your Six, hope to see you back next week. Have a great weekend, Jon.

Thanks. Maybe a Gloriosa would do OK up against a wall with southern exposure? Not sure. Summers here are actually a bit too hot for some South African plants. It’s a balancing act finding plants that tolerate heat and also survive brief cold snaps down to -12 C. Geophytes do best, because the ground doesn’t freeze to any appreciable depth in winter. So, although cold snaps damage or kill tender shrubs, I can grow a surprising variety of bulbs and corms from Africa and South America.

If you do try Gloriosa, I recommend seed. Judging by color break in the flowers, I suspect a lot of the commercially available tubers are virused.

None other than the Royal Horticultural Society says it’s frost tender, like a dahlia, i would imagine. Needs overwintering somewhere dry. I have a southish facing fence that would suit I think. I’m gonna look out for seeds. Thanks for the pointer!

AFAIK, only a few places over here sell seeds (e.g. £4 for half-a-dozen or 99p for half a dozen whatever varieties at T&M – judge the risk!). I’ve tried growing from seed – seems to take around 3 years before they flower though – but plants didn’t do at all well. One nursery I know tried growing them to the small plant stage for sale but withdrew the stock because it just wouldn’t grow away. Advice is to treat tubers like dahlias – lift, dry and store though what sort of tuber would exist six or so months after sowing I know not.

Hi. Thanks for the plug! My selection of photos carefully avoids a lot of the garden which is currently undergoing a 5-yearly renovation (i.e. cut back of invading roots from next door no-mans-land). Can’t be promoting mounds of earth, can I?

I wonder if your daylily is a variant on “Johnny Come Lately” (Look at https://garden.org/plants/view/24292/Daylily-Hemerocallis-Johnny-Come-Lately/). I had it but found it a little too garish for my taste so gave it away. Over here it’s a late bloomer but I don’t know how here relates to your climate. Things are odd this year. My tiger lilies have come (at a rough 3 feet!) and gone. Regale, which should be in flower at about 3 feet tall are just budding and looking down at my just under 6 feet. So-called “tree lilies” are budding at about 2 feet tall; last year they were about 8 feet tall! And half of a row of gladioli that I didn’t lift last year are now shooting on my neighbours’ side of a fence. The other half of the row isn’t shooting anywhere!